Monday, November 26, 2007

Hate me: I lost weight over Thanksgiving!

Yup, I was 153 pounds last week, and 152 this morning! This in spite of a heavy-meals Wednesday, traditional all-out Thanksgiving meals on Thursday and Friday, huge leftovers lunch on Saturday followed by a nice dinner out.

Credit goes to three factors:

I rode my ass off. I did a hard FTP workout Thursday at 2x20-minutes, then Friday off to rest, then a killer L5 hill repeats workout with my Team Bicycle Trip teammates on Saturday with about 50 miles thrown in. Sunday I surfed for about 1.5 hours.

We didn't have good pumpkin pie. Or any other good pies for that matter. I loooove pie! We only had a Whole Foods pumpkin pie, which is too sweet, and some unusual Indian Bread Pudding. Neither enticed me for seconds.

I avoided the mashed potatoes and breads pretty well. Even though I made one batch of mashed potatoes with sweet potatoes blended in which is really tasty, I just took small dollops. I compensated by eating some extra veggies and turkey. Yummy and healthier.

After all that I did have a brief spike at 158.5 pounds, but that was all water. Don't freak out when you see these high peak readings, because salt and protein, and some other foods, tend to cause your body to retain water. After a couple of days it's mostly all gone. Since I track my calorie intake and expenditure, I knew that I hadn't overindulged.

And, no, I am not obsessed with my weight, I'm not, I'm not! ;-)

I do want to eliminate about 5 pounds of body fat, though, as that extra weight would slow me down on some of the hilly road races I want to do next season. I weighed about 148 pounds just a couple of years ago, but got tricked into gaining. Analytic Cycling website has an interesting online tool that allows you to calculate the effect that weight has on cyclists's hill-climbing abilities.

I'm a bit heavier than the really good climbers. I have teammates who weigh 20 pounds less than me... but I'm not trying to get down to their level as I have some upper-body muscle that they lack because I surf and I'm more of a sprinter anyway. But getting a little closer would be a nice bonus.

By the way, I absolutely loooooove leftover turkey, and was able to score some! Yummy. And my awesome brother-in-outlaw Richard scored me some homemade wild boar sausage! That is so cool. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday! Well, Christmas ain't so bad either.

My favorite Thanksgiving quote, from my sister, regarding her fiancee Richard: "Why should I buy the bull if I can get the shit for free?"